patch adams

i'd finally gotten round to watching patch adams today with su wen (leong) and charlie! it's really inspiring, it reminded me of the reason i wanted to be a doctor in the first place. seriously, before starting med school, i'd always envisioned myself as a doctor like patch adams. of course, i'd never be as great as he is, but i'd always thought that one day i'd like to be a doctor just like him; someone who's a friend to patients, who listens because he wants to and not because it's part of his job, someone who clowns around to cheer them up, and so on. i never wanted to be one of those stiff doctors in their starched collars sitting around just diagnosing patients.

i got this quote from chris's blog and i think it's really lovely - "Patients will not care how much you know, until they know how much you care."

sad to say, after starting med school, (don't get me wrong, i'm not saying that med school is bad. on the contrary, it's very important to help us grow as doctors-to-be) i'd kind of lost that vision. after all the grueling training and endless lessons on how to behave like doctors (not to mention pressure from certain classmates), one cannot help but succumb to conformation. towards the end of last year, i've been so focused on doing everything exactly the way i've been taught to that even showing compassion has been part of a routine rather than something that comes from the heart. i know, i'm ashamed of myself too, but luckily it's not too late for me to realise that now. i guess in order not to end up being a robot, i've got to constantly remind myself of patch adams and his eccentrical, but effective, ways of treating his patients. :)

three cheers to patch adams!


P.S. hah vijay, so there! there's nothing wrong with being excessively happy! it doesnt make me a hypomaniac.

science explains it all

wow wow wow while i was browsing through wikipedia, i discovered the term which describes my altered perception last year! it's called hypnagogia

this was my post:

since last yr, there's been like 3 occasions where i had this feeling of some kind of presence in my room. trust me, it's not the comforting kind. and this thing is like watching me.

the first time it happened, it was really really freaky. i couldnt tell if i was awake or asleep, but it felt real enough. i woke up (?) in the middle of the night, and immediately i could tell that there was something in my room aside from my grandma and myself. i wanted to reach out to wake my grandma up, but no matter how hard i tried, i couldnt move a muscle or make any sound at all. i was just paralysed with fear. so i prayed over and over again. i cant rmb wat happened after that. i suppose the feeling passed and i fell asleep.

i cant rmb anything about wat happened the second time except that i got the feeling that someone was watching me again.

the third time was like 2 days ago. i went to sleep about close to three am, and i got that feeling again. and again, i couldnt tell if i was awake or asleep. it was like there's this prickly feeling and all my senses were heightened and my body was tensed up. and then i dreamt.

see, it all fits
1. Hypnagogia (also spelled hypnogogia) describes vivid dreamlike auditory, visual, or tactile sensations, which are often accompanied by sleep paralysis and experienced when falling asleep or waking

2. Experienced qualities vary, and include fear, awareness of a "presence," chest or back pressure, and an inability to breathe.

3. During the hypnagogic state, an individual may appear to be fully awake, but has brain waves indicating that the individual is technically sleeping. Also, the individual may be completely aware of their state.

beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder

that's really true. i was reading this article in some old edition of cleo (i think) called 'are you thinner than u think?' and it made a lot of sense. it says something like, "whenever i look at myself in the mirror, all i see are my flaws. and when i look at my friends, all i see are these beautiful beings."

take pei pei for example. she's always complaining that she's dark and complimenting wendy on her fairness. when we compare the two, pei pei's actually fairer than wendy (although she refuses to admit it, she kept insisting that we're wrong).

or jaslyne. jas is always telling me that she likes my shoulders and she hates her broad ones. um yeah, my shoulders are broad too. so one day when we were arguing/ debating over whose are broader, we decided to compare them. yep, u guessed it ... mine are broader than jas's and she too refuses to accept that fact.

well i guess i cant really do anything to change their minds. but what i can tell u is that when u look in the mirror, look out for ur beauty, and not ur imperfections.